(a) Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a liquid crystal display.
(b) Description of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display, which is one of widely used types of flat panel display, typically includes two display panels on which a field generating electrode, such as a pixel electrode and a common electrode, is disposed and a liquid crystal layer interposed between the two display panels. The liquid crystal display generates an electric field in the liquid crystal layer by applying voltage to the field generating electrode to determine orientations of liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer and control polarization of incident light, thereby displaying an image.
The liquid crystal display generally includes a pixel including a switching element, typically implemented as a thin film transistor (“TFT”) that is a 3-terminal element, and a display panel provided with display signal lines such as a gate line and a data line. The TFT serves as the switching element that transfers or interrupts data voltage transferred through the data line to a pixel based on a gate signal transferred through the gate line.
A liquid crystal capacitor includes a pixel electrode and a common electrode as two terminals, and the liquid crystal layer interposed between the two electrodes serves as a dielectric material. Charge voltage of the liquid crystal capacitor, i.e., pixel voltage, is determined by a difference between the data voltage applied to the pixel electrode and the common voltage applied to the common electrode. Orientations of liquid crystal molecules vary depending on the magnitude of the pixel voltage, and polarization of light passing through the liquid crystal layer thereby varies. The polarization variation is shown as variation of transmittance of light by a polarizer attached to the liquid crystal display, and the pixel thereby displays luminance corresponding to a gray of an image signal.
The polarity of the data voltage may be positive or negative. The polarity of the data voltage represents the polarity of the data voltage with respect to the common voltage. The positive data voltage is data voltage of (+) with respect to the common voltage, and the negative data voltage is data voltage of (−) with respect to the common voltage.
When the liquid crystal display is driven, an inversion driving, in which data voltage having a polarity opposite to a polarity of data voltage applied in a predetermined frame is applied in a subsequent frame, is typically used. The inversion driving method includes a column inversion driving and 3-column inversion driving, for example. The column inversion driving is a driving method in which data voltage inverted every column is applied in each frame, and the 3-column inversion driving is a driving method in which the data voltage having the same polarity is applied to three neighboring columns and the data voltage inverted every three columns is applied.
However, the size of a driving circuit of the liquid crystal display may be increase when the 3-column inversion driving is used, and a manufacturing cost may be thereby increased.